Charles Fort

“ That no supposititious whirlwind can account for the hundreds of millions of tons of matter that fell upon Australia, Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean and Europe in 1902 and 1903—that a whirlwind that could do that would not be supposititious.
But now we shall cast off some of our own wessicality by accepting that there have been falls of red substance other than sand.
We regard every science as an expression of the attempt to be real. But to be real is to localize the universal—or to make some one thing as wide as all things—successful accomplishment of which I cannot conceive of. ”

“ For instance, chemical analysis can reveal that almost any dead man was poisoned with arsenic, we'll say, because there is no stomach without some iron, lead, tin, gold, arsenic in it and of it—which, of course, in a broader sense, doesn't matter much, because a certain number of persons must, as a restraining influence, be executed for murder every year; and, if detectives aren't able really to detect anything, illusion of their success is all that is necessary, and it is very honorable to give up one's life for society as a whole. ”

“ There is no science but Wessex-science.
According to our acceptance, there should be no other, but that approximation should be higher: that metaphysics is super-evil: that the scientific spirit is of the cosmic quest.
Our notion is that, in a real existence, such a quasi-system of fables as the science of chemistry could not deceive for a moment: but that in an "existence" endeavoring to become real, it represents that endeavor, and will continue to impose its pseudo-positiveness until it be driven out by a higher approximation to realness ”

“ Our Intermediatist principle of pseudo-logic, or our principle of Continuity is, of course, that nothing is unique, or individual: that all phenomena merge away into all other phenomena: that, for instance—suppose there should be vast celestial super-oceanic, or inter-planetary vessels that come near this earth and discharge volumes of smoke at times. We're only supposing such a thing as that now, because, conventionally, we are beginning modestly and tentatively. But if it were so, there would necessarily be some phenomenon upon this earth, with which that phenomenon would merge. ”

“ The prime resistance to the positivist attempt by Science is its relations with other phenomena, or that it only expresses those relations in the first place. Or that a Science can have seeming, or survive in Intermediateness, as something pure, isolated, positively different, no more than could a river or a city or a mountain or a store. ”

“ Such thinkers are good positivists, but they are evil in an economic and sociologic sense, if, in that sense, nothing has justification for being, unless it serve, or function for, or express the relations, of some higher aggregate. So Science functions for and serves society at large, and would, from society at large, receive no support, unless it did so divert itself or dissipate and prostitute itself. ”

“ SO then it is our expression that Science relates to real knowledge no more than does the growth of a plant, or the organization of a department store, or the development of a nation: that all are assimilative, or organizing, or systematizing processes that represent different attempts to attain the positive state—the state commonly called heaven, I suppose I mean. ”

“ To think is to conceive incompletely, because all thought relates only to the local. We metaphysicians, of course, like to have the notion that we think of the unthinkable.
As to opinions, or pronouncements, I should say, because they always have such an authoritative air, of other chemists, there is an analysis in Nature, 68-54, giving water and organic matter at 9.08 per cent. It's that carrying out of fractions that's so convincing. The substance is identified as sand from the Sahara. ”

“ The invariable, or the real and stable, would be nothing at all in Intermediateness—rather as, but in relative terms, an undistorted interpretation of external sounds in the mind of a dreamer could not continue to exist in a dreaming mind, because that touch of relative realness would be of awakening and not of dreaming. Science is the attempt to awaken to realness, wherein it is attempt to find regularity and uniformity. ”

“ There is, in human intellection, no real standard to judge by, but our acceptance, for the present, is that the more nearly positive will prevail. By the more nearly positive we mean the more nearly Organized. Everything merges away into everything else, but proportionately to its complexity, if unified, a thing seems strong, real, and distinct: so, in aesthetics, it is recognized that diversity in unity is higher beauty, or approximation to Beauty, than is simpler unity ”

“ There can be no real science where there are indeterminate variables, but every variable is, in finer terms, indeterminate, or irregular, if only to have the appearance of being in Intermediateness is to express regularity unattained. ”

“ If chemists have identified substances that have fallen in Europe as sand from African deserts, swept up in African whirlwinds, that's assuasive to all the irritations that occur to those cloistered minds that must repose in the concept of a snug, isolated, little world, free from contact with cosmic wickednesses, safe from stellar guile, undisturbed by inter-planetary prowlings and invasions. ”

“ Not the strongest; not the cleverest——
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.
"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival." ”

“ But the Editor does not say that this substance "contained" pollen. He disregards "nitrogen, ammonia, and an animal odor," and says that the substance was pollen. For the sake of our thirty or forty tokens of liberality, or pseudo-liberality, if we can't be really liberal, we grant that the chemist of the first examination probably wouldn't know an animal odor if he were janitor of a menagerie. As we go along, however, there can be no such sweeping ignoring of this phenomenon:
The fall of animal-matter from the sky. ”

“ By the universal we mean the real. Or the notion is that the underlying super-attempt, as expressed in Science, is indifferent to the subject-matter of Science: that the attempt to regularize is the vital spirit. ”

“ Our Intermediatist concept is that, because of the continuity of all "things," which are not separate, positive, or real things, all pseudo-things partake of the underlying, or are only different expressions, degrees, or aspects of the underlying: so then that a sample from somewhere in anything must correspond with a sample from somewhere in anything else. ”

“ Although Darwinism, then, seems positively baseless, or absolutely irrational, its massing of supposed data, and its attempted coherence approximate more highly to Organization and Consistency than did the inchoate speculations that preceded it. ”

“ At the Cape of Good Hope, vast volumes of smoke from great manufacturing centers, as an explanation, can not very acceptably merge with the explanation of extra-mundane origin—but smoke from a terrestial volcano can, and that is the suggestion that is made in La Nature. ”

“ Our opponents hold out for mundane origin of all black rains. Our method will be the presenting of diverse phenomena in agreement with the notion of some other origin. We take up not only black rains but black rains and their accompanying phenomena.
A correspondent to Knowledge, 5-190, writes of a black rain that fell in the Clyde Valley, March 1, 1884: of another black rain that fell two days later. According to the correspondent, a black rain had fallen in the Clyde Valley, March 20, 1828: then again March 22, 1828. According to Nature, 9-43, a black rain fell at Marlsford, England, Sept. ”

“ In Nature, 68-65, we are told that it had occurred in Ireland, too. The Sahara, of course—because, prior to Feb. 19, there had been dust storms in the Sahara—disregarding that in that great region there's always, in some part of it, a dust storm. However, just at present, it does look reasonable that dust had come from Africa, via the Canaries.
The great difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend with is some other authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a pontification——
They explain.
Nature, March 5, 1903:
Another analysis—36 per cent organic matter. ”